


On Your Mark

by Aespren



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 06:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5698051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aespren/pseuds/Aespren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't try to woo him just because some name on your arm said to. If this isn't what you want, then stop right now. Armin doesn't believe in things like fate. And he especially doesn't believe that a person should fall in love just because they are told to."</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Your Mark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maquina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maquina/gifts).



> This work was created for syncs/maquina for Jearminevents Secret Santa. I'm really sorry I can't give you the slow burn you deserve, but slow burn is rather difficult to do in a one-shot... Thus, I've had to jump in to where the feelings between them already exist.
> 
> I decided to go with soulmate AU because it was something I could apply to canonverse (where I am comfortable) but also featured an AU that you wanted. I decided to go with the version where names appear on the arms, but only on the sixteenth birthday to make things more interesting. I considered doing quotes originally (either first words said, or meaningful phrase said), but decided to go with names in the end since I wanted the focus to be more on them dealing with their feelings than trying to figure out who their soulmate was.

Jean had grown up listening to romance stories.

It wasn't that he'd wanted to - no, he'd have much rather listened to stories of heroes fighting monsters than of two people finding true love - but his mother had insisted that they were the best stories to listen to, and every night before bed, she'd tell him a different tale of people who overcame obstacles to find the person they were meant to be with.

So Jean sat through numerous stories which told the same tales over and over again. They told of people who had spent their whole life searching for the person whose name was written on their arm, only to find them near the end of their life and regret not having searched for them sooner.

Then there were the people who had known their lover in childhood, but like everyone else, didn't receive the name on their arm until their sixteenth birthday. They would then leave home to search for the person they once knew. Oftentimes these stories ended in tragedy, with the childhood friend having disappeared years ago due to illness, and were no longer around for their lover to find.

Then finally, there were the stories about people who, after spending so long looking for their loved one, decided not to tell them who they were because they didn't think the other person would love them back. Those were the stories Jean had hated the most. He'd never understood how a person could be nervous telling their soulmate who they were. After all, the names were right there on their arms. What was the other person going to do; reject them? Tell them they didn't believe in fate? It was ridiculous.

But as Jean sat across the table from Armin Arlert, his comrade of three years, he knew that rejection was a very real possibility.

It wasn't that Armin didn't believe in fate or true love, it was just that... well, Jean didn't know what it was. He at least _hoped_ he believed. Things would get a lot more difficult otherwise.

Armin's questioning belief was only the beginning of a series of problems leading up to the current time, where the two of them sat in the decrepit, yet functional, kitchen of their latest temporary base. The second problem was that this was only the second time in the past week where Jean had gotten Armin to stay in the same room with him for longer than five minutes. It seemed every time he'd run into him he'd been busy with some sort of task - "I need to go get these papers to Hange," "Captain Levi asked me to clean out the spare horse cart," "I'm on guard duty, I've got to go."

The third problem was that Jean still had yet to even try to tell Armin what was going on.

He'd tried to tell him last week, when he'd first found out. It would have been logical to just get it all over with, but his original reaction to seeing a name on his arm when he woke up was to try to hide it from everyone else as quickly as possible. It was a normal reaction, but the way he'd done it was a bit...

Well, long story short, he didn't want to confess his feelings to Armin on the same day half of his squad saw him scream and shove his arm down his pants.

Now though, he had another chance to talk to him - and if Mikasa was to be believed, it would be one of his last. There was only so much time until Connie and Sasha came back from scavenging, or Levi came in to tell them they needed to work faster, or someone did _something_ that would require Armin's attention.

Mikasa said she would do her best to keep others away, though Jean wasn't even sure why. Was she actually okay with all of this? If it wasn't for her he wouldn't even be here right now. He was taking _her_ shift for kitchen duty and he wasn't even sure if her giving it to him was a sign of generosity or just her way of not having to deal with Levi's complaints about unevenly cooked vegetables. Considering her prior lack of concern for his love life and feelings in the past, it seemed more likely to be the latter. But really he was grateful for any help she would give and the last thing he needed was her changing her mind because he decided to make some sly remark. It was bad enough having to ask her for advice on his love life, but when the options were between a past crush and Eren Yeager, it was an easy choice.

Still, she hadn't made him any less nervous.

“ _If you don't tell him now, you won't get a chance to tell him at all._ _”_

Jean sighed. She was probably right. The closer it got to his birthday, the less likely Armin would be to believe his confession.

Why was this so hard! When he'd admitted he liked Mikasa in training it had never been this difficult. He'd just blurted it out like a moron, got rejected, and moved on. Sure, maybe it'd taken him a little while, but he did _eventually_ get over it. So why couldn't he do the same here; just tell Armin he liked him and let life take its course?

Well, probably because he didn't want to be rejected again. That was a good enough reason, wasn't it?

"It would be nice if the others could find some fruit out there."

"Huh?" Jean's hand slipped with the knife and half an onion went flying. Within a second it had hit the floor and had bounced its way towards the other side of the room, stopping at the foot of the wooden stool Armin was perched on. He raised an eyebrow.

"My bad."

The stool rattled as Armin slipped off, teetering back and forth on it's uneven legs. Blond hair fell from behind Armin's ear as he picked the purple lump up. He held it in his hand and stared at it. "Do you think we can still use this?"

"They grow in the ground, don't they?"

Armin pulled his sleeves back and dunked the onion into the water basin then set it on the counter besides the other chopped vegetables. "As long as we don't let Captain Levi know."

Jean smirked.

"As I was saying, don't you get sick of constantly eating potatoes and onions?" Armin asked.

"You've tried my mom's cooking before, remember? Everything tastes like crap after growing up on that."

Armin smiled. "I can believe that. Your mom's food is really good."

"I cook too!" Jean blurted the words out a bit louder than he intended. Armin looked up at him, knife still in hand from chopping the potatoes. He stared at Jean for a moment and Jean could feel his face heating up. That had been more than a bit weird.

"I know," was what Armin finally decided to say.

"I mean, we could go find some fruit in the woods. Together. Maybe." Jean forced himself to pause and take a breath. "We could go and find some berries or something, and I could try to make something out of them."

"We could, as long as we don't bring Eren."

...Was Armin actually saying he wanted to spend time alone with him? Jean placed an elbow on the counter and leaned forward. "You know I'm always okay with not bringing Eren somewhere."

Armin didn't respond to his humour, but at least he didn't frown either. Partial success?

“Did you know that he tried to eat some red berries he picked out in the field once? He picked a whole handful full of them and put them all in his mouth at the same time.”

Jean wasn't listening; he had more pressing thoughts on his mind. If he asked Armin to go with him right now would he agree? Would that be a better time to talk to him?

“They were poisonous. He was sick for hours afterwards."

But then he ran the risk of Connie running into them ...again.

"Then I had to take him to Hange so they could make sure he didn't get any worse."

Now was the only time he had where they were guaranteed not to be bothered.

"Jean? Are you listening?"

...And he wasn't even paying any attention. "Huh?"

"Don't you remember that?"

"Remember what?"

"When Eren got sick from those berries he found."

"Oh, yeah. I guess so." Of course he did. He did his best to remember every idiotic thing that Eren did so he could rub it in later. But he didn't want to talk about that right now. Or rather, he had other things he needed to talk about.

"So, Armin..."

"Yeah?" He responded while not looking up from his task.

"Have you thought about what you'll do when your birthday comes?"

"I've told you before what I think about destiny," Armin responded. The methodical chopping of the potatoes continued as if the question hadn't even been asked. Jean had expected about as much.

Talking about plans for the future was generally taboo for members of the Survey Corps, at least among lowly recruits such as themselves. But Jean had never let that stop him. Why should he care what was considered proper to talk about or not? He had no plans to die anytime soon. So needless to say, Armin and him had spent countless hours talking about the future, what they wanted to do with their lives - and that often involved meeting the person whose name would appear on their arm when they turned sixteen years old. Or at least, that was what Jean had always talked about.

Armin used to avoid the topic when they'd first started talking with each other. Later, when they became close enough for Jean to consider them friends, Armin opened himself up and soon was impossible to shut up when a thought was sparked. This had included destiny, but also any other topic under the sun - and then some. Now though, Armin barely batted an eyelash. To him, the discussion had already been finished the first day they'd talked about it. It didn't help that, on multiple occasions following, Jean had done his best to try to convince Armin otherwise.

As a kid he'd always believed everything his mother told him. He'd trusted her words about the sandman who came at night to give children good dreams, and the trolls who lived under bridges so they could charge pedestrians money to pass by. When she'd told him the titans had broken inside Wall Maria because of bad kids who didn't do their chores, he'd believed that too; he'd believed it until he went to the trainee corps and the other cadets had laughed at him. Needless to say, when his mother had told him that one day fate would help him find true love, he'd believed every word.

For Armin, the conversations revolved less around where he was going to be in the future, and more about how the future was shaped. He had to question everything, including the names that appeared on the arms of people. He'd come along and told him the other side; "What about people disowned by their families for disobeying the will of the names?" "How come there are more men matched with men and women matched with women now that we need to keep a better watch on our population?" Then there was the involvement of the titans - "If they can wipe the memories of all humanity, then why is it so hard to believe they can control who we fall in love with?" They were theories so insane that if anyone but Armin had said them, Jean would have written it off as a practical joke. Sadly, he knew better than to expect any jokes from Armin, but it didn't change how senseless it all was; if anyone inside Wall Sina ever heard they would contact the Military Police immediately.

Yet, for some reason, Jean had listened.

At first, the conversations went as they always did; Armin presented some irrational idea that Jean would call out for the insane thought that it was. Then, as usual, Armin would list all the evidence behind it and Jean would be left questioning just what he had been saying a minute beforehand. It was absurdity, all of it, but in it's own insane way it had made sense. Sure, everything coming out of his mouth was complete heresy (and for this reason Jean always got nervous whenever Armin talked to senior officers, as if he was going to blurt out his distrust of the government every time he opened his mouth), but he couldn't bring himself to stop listening. Who was fate to boss him around anyway?

So it was after all this that Jean started realizing that he didn't have to wait until he was sixteen to have romantic feelings. Or rather, he didn't have to wait till then to act on them. But now...

Jean stared down at his own arm, where his shirt sleeve was pull all the way down.

...How could he not believe? His own feelings told him this was right.

What was even the point in having a system to help people get together if Armin refused to believe in it? It wasn't even a question of faith; it was a fact of how life worked within the walls. Sure, the reason why it happened might not be quite what people said, but the outcome was the same.

And somehow he'd happened to get stuck with the one person in the walls who didn't believe in it.

Well, there was no getting around it. If he didn't start talking soon then he wouldn't get a chance to talk for at least another week, if not longer. There was no knowing when they'd be resting again.

Now was as good a time as any. If there was one thing that Jean was good at, it was convincing other people to love him! Or at least that was what his mother had always told him.

"Yeah, but I thought you might change your mind. You know, maybe it isn't all a conspiracy created by royalty and titans?" Jean teased.

"I never said it was. It could also just be the result of hormonal balances in our bodies that act-"

"I know, I know. You've explained it before. But haven't you ever thought about it, at all? What happens if you get the name of someone you really like?" Jean did his best to smile as he asked the question but all he could manage was a lopsided grin, at best.

"It won't matter."

"What do you mean it won't matter?"

"Jean..."

"What? You don't want to tell me?"

"We're in the Survey Corps..."

The answer wasn't surprising. It wasn't the first time Armin had answered this way. "So what you're saying is we'll both be dead before we get married?"

"No, just that I have other priorities."

"So you're not interested in love then?"

Armin didn't respond right away.

"I just don't think it will happen," Armin said. “You shouldn't be so worried. You'll get to see the name on your arm soon enough anyway. Your birthday is coming soon, right?”

“Right...” Sort of. That was what it said on his birth documents, at least. The real situation was a bit more complicated.

His mom had been pretty excited to meet the love of her life and like many others before her, she had perhaps gotten... ahead of herself. It wasn't something Jean wanted to know the details about. So, in order to prevent his maternal grandparents from knowing that he was conceived outside of wedlock, his parents had lied about when he was born by a few months.

This wasn't the first time complications had been caused by it. People had always said what a big baby he was and how they expected him to grow up to be giant. He didn't exactly end up short, but he'd be lying if he said he hadn't been jealous of Reiner. After years of expectations it was a bit disappointing to end up average. He didn't want to be average in anything.

So this led to more disappointment when he had to wait till he was thirteen to join the military while everyone else his age left. His mother had been happy, but for Jean it just felt like his entire life was delayed. Sure, it was only a few months difference, but he had plans for the future and living in Trost and selling clothes with his mom at a market stall was not one of them.

Then again, joining the Survey Corps had never been part of the plan. Nor had falling for his blond haired teammate.

But here he was and there wasn't anything he would change. He didn't quite know how things between them had come to be; he wasn't sure of a lot of things. But one thing he did know was that he didn't want to lose his only chance.

_"I_ _f you really want to do this, you'd be better off doing it soon. If he finds out, he's going to think that's your only motivation._ "

Jean grabbed his wrist with his left hand. Maybe if he squeezed hard enough he could just make this whole thing go away. Maybe he could change the name written on it. It would probably increase the chances of Armin liking him back more.

" _Don't try to woo him just because some name on your arm said to. If this isn't what you want, then stop right now."_

Of course he wanted to do this. He'd wanted to do this for months.

" _Armin doesn't believe in things like fate. And he especially doesn't believe that a person should fall in love with another person just because they are told to."_

Well what about people like him who were stuck with people who didn't believe? Sure, Armin didn't want to fall for someone just because he was told to, but it wasn't exactly easy on him either. Jean didn't want to be the person who pined for years after someone who was never going to return his affections. He'd already done that long enough with Mikasa, and was still seeing her do the same.

As lame as it was, he wanted love.

“Jean?" Armin was staring at him now.

“Yeah?”

“Captain Levi's going to scold you later.”

For what? Lying about his birthday? It wasn't his choice!

“Your sleeves are a mess.” Armin gestured with his free hand to where Jean was still holding on his wrist.

Oh. Jean removed his hand. Purple stains. At least the name underneath still wasn't visible.

“You should go change before he checks in on us.”

“No, it's fine.”

“Don't you remember the last time when Connie got carrot stains on his pants? The Captain-"

“ _It's fine._ _”_

"But..."

"I'll change after, okay?"

Armin was forced to accept the answer, though it was apparent that he didn't agree with Jean's plan. If he wasn't currently so nervous, Jean would find his worrying to be cute.

"Hey, Armin?"

"Yeah?"

It seemed there was no other way of getting through to him. Jean gave himself a second to breathe, then asked the question he'd had on his mind all week - no, _all year_ ; "What if your arm ends up getting my name on it?"

A quiet _clink_ comes from the cutting board as Armin lets go of the knife.

Okay maybe that was a bit too direct. No, it was way too direct. Time to retreat. "Funny, right?"

No response.

"Could you imagine? We argue all the time already." If he kept talking enough he could make it all out to be a joke. Then he could just drop the topic altogether. "And then Eren would want to visit, but I would probably lock him out of the house while you're not looking."

"Jean."

"Okay I'm not _that_ much of an asshole. He can visit. ...But only during certain hours or else I'll-"

"Jean, stop."

Jean did as he was told. He'd known that was what Armin had meant the first time, but he didn't want to let the room fall into silence. If it did Armin would have a chance to talk; to tell him why everything he was saying was nonsense.

He'd have a chance to break his heart.

Armin was still staring down at the cutting board. Jean wished he would look at him so he could see just what it was he was thinking - anything to make this go by faster. Instead, he focused on the rise and fall of Armin's chest. It was rhythmic and allowed him to put his focus into something besides the blackout of conversation.

"I know what you're trying to do, okay?" The words were spoken quietly

"Oh." He forced a smile onto his face. "Is it working?"

There was no response; Jean had never expected one. It was too late to save the conversation with jokes.

Jean ran a hand along his neck. "I didn't think you'd noticed."

After a second, Armin raised his head. His hair fell back to reveal those blue eyes that Jean had stared into countless times before. "How could I _not_?"

Had he really been that obvious?

"Jean... you've been looking for love ever since I've met you," Armin stated, "And you've made a mistake by thinking that might be me. You should be waiting for your birthday."

"Why?"

"Because you're supposed to go with the person you're meant for. That's the whole point of it, isn't it?"

_And that person is you, but I can't tell you or you'll think I'm only doing it for that reason._

"Why does that even matter? You told me yourself that you don't believe in fate. You're the one who practically told me that fate is a figment of our imagination. So why do you care what my arm says?"

"Because I know you do! Jean, this isn't an issue of what I believe. It doesn't _matter_ what I believe. I know you. Ever since the first day of training you've been interested in finding someone. You always talked about how you were going to go to the Military Police and have a family and live a normal life, unlike all of us in the Survey Corps."

This wasn't how Jean had wanted things to go. He'd wanted to explain his feelings to Armin, to let him know how he felt about him, but instead he felt frustrated.

"Do you really think I'm the same person I was back in training? Do you really think I'm no better than a kid who doesn't care about their comrades feelings? Do you really think I would do something like this without thinking it through? So what if I want a happy life? Don't you? Do you seriously not want some place to go home to when we're not on missions? Or would you rather live in the barracks like Erwin does, constantly working without living? Because if you say you do then I don't believe you.

"I'm not doing this because some name on my arm told me to, I'm doing this because I-" Jean stuttered. He wasn't ready to say it out loud, but he'd already said half of it, so there was no turning back now. "Because I like you."

"Then why are you lying to me!"

Jean tried to speak, but he wasn't sure what to say. So his mouth just hung slightly open, his tongue at the ready to give Armin another speech, but all he could manage to say was "What?"

"You've been hiding your arm all week." Armin's fists were curled into balls, his nails digging into the palms of his hand. They didn't match the way his voice had wavered when he spoke.

"You noticed?"

"It was kind of hard not to," Armin spoke, allowing his tone to return to a normal level. "Every time I walked into a room you would look down at your arm and then stare at me."

"Oh." What was there to say to that? Jean didn't have time to decide how to explain.

"Are you," Armin began, "Are you only doing it because it's my name?"

"No." That much Jean could answer with certainty.

"Then why?"

"Because I want you to believe me."

Armin's eyes widened slightly.

"And if you knew I had my name then you wouldn't, no matter what my arm says."

"I thought that..."

"Were you worried it was someone else?"

Armin didn't respond, but his fist retightened itself and his eyes looked back down to the cutting board.

"You were, weren't you?"

Armin didn't respond, but the redness of his face gave it all away. To think after all pain worrying that Armin would reject him the moment he found out, Armin was just as concerned as he was.

This was ridiculous. _They_ were ridiculous. Jean couldn't help but smile. "I should have known you secretly cared about it."

"I don't."

"Liar."

"I'm not!" Armin retorted. Was he still angry? Did he seriously just mess things up?

"I don't care what your arm says." Armin paused. "But I care about you."

Oh. Just how red must his face be right now?

Jean wondered if this was an appropriate time to move closer. Would Armin be okay with it if he tried to-

" _We should finish dinner_ ," Armin said. The words came out so randomly, and so jumbled together, that Jean wondered for a moment if Armin had taken lessons of how to confess his feelings from his twelve year old self. Or maybe he was just trying to avoid a situation that he had seen coming from a mile away.

Either way, if things went well, there would be time for stuff like that another time. It wasn't like he really knew what he was doing, anyway.

So he went along with Armin's words."Probably. I don't think Captain Levi will be happy if we tell him it's not even cooking yet."

"Neither will Sasha."

Jean smiled. "Taking a shot at one of your comrades, I see."

"I'm just stating the facts." Armin smiled back. "Come on, let's go get it started. And then after," Armin said, grabbing onto Jean's wrist, "I'll help you get the stains out of your shirt."

**Author's Note:**

> It was really difficult to write about this and not write 10k words of backstory and world building. Ever since they introduced the whole 'titans can control people's minds's thing' into the manga I've been wondering how a soul mate AU could be applied to this and what it means. But I decided that maybe I should, you know, focus on the Jearmin... Though, my focusing on Jearmin really just means lots of them talking and getting nowhere with their feelings. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I'd really like to go back sometime and try to correct some of the pacing issues I feel are apparent. Besides that though, it was fun (but extremely challenging) to write something I never would have tried otherwise. I'm glad for the opportunity and hope that it made a decent gift.
> 
> I'd like to thank melonpanparade for helping me with the title. As usual, thanks to anyone who has read this far.


End file.
